Sand is an important part of the construction industry; it is used in both glass and concrete. 71% of the Earth is covered by water while the other 29% is an island. Of the 29% left over, on that island, only 33% is desert. Of that 33%, only 20% of the desert land is covered by sand. When you look at it that way; it is a very small portion of our global landscape. It is reported that 50 billion metric tons of sand are used annually. That could build an 88-foot-tall wall that is 88 feet wide around the whole Earth. That is insane.
It is the second most popular resource to mankind behind water. Sand is also an unregulated material. The United Nations has called this crisis due to sand not being controlled and solely relied upon. They have reported that they need to work to find another way to build using other untapped resources. What those resources are, has not yet been defined, but sand is not an unlimited resource and it has been treated as such.
The tech industry, most notably in mobile phone technologies, uses sand for the much-needed manufactured material called silicon. I bet this is another reason Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. The company that taps into and mines Mars will be beyond trillionaires.
The world wants to shift from the use of plastics to other means to fulfill its highly used role within our society (product containment- to name one). An anonymous source who owns a rock-based company has claimed "market manipulation". She stated that there is an enormous wealth of sandstone that can be crushed and turned into sand, to this fact, it is observed from her experience with the industry that the "powers that be" are trying to drive up the price of sand since the global community is trying to transition away from this previously stated high dependence in plastics which will cause a higher dependence of sand.
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